The GW market, analysis

Lately I've noticed alot of threads blaming inflation and high prices on a few things

* Bots. The programmes that farm gold in certain areas.
-The favourite icon of many haters.
* Farmers. Solo, 2-man, Group. Gold, Items, Greens or even materials

* Sellers/ Trader. A mystical group of people who single handedly set and organise the prices of the GW market.


So what are the community's idea on this subject?


My personal ideas are such
Bots have very little impact upon game play. Sure they make it easier for newbs and lazy players to get that 100k extra. But what effect does that have upon the game? I can farm just as hard as a bot and still have the same amount of gold as what they sell.

Now I believe its wrong to ebay gold (Which is another point, Ebay is the perhaps the slackest gold sellers facility out there. But yet the main focus of the issue) Anet shold do all they can to prevent this mis-use of there game. But they hardly impact the game.

Famers. Another element of the market. Hate them or love them there a class unto themselves now. Just like runners.

Ahh the days when runners were heckled out of districts for cheating the game. Now there a requirement almost in the desert.
Farmers go and farm items of interest and sell them to other players, who are either too lazy to get them personally. Or aren't at the same skill level as there monster counter parts. Or they do it to make money.
Is it such a bad thing to make money?

Now some people will claim there not really playing the game. I think thats simply stupid. True its not following the missions. And it not PvP, but I think its still a valid game element.

As for the traders and sellers, I've only ever had alittle to do with this idea. Thats buying materials and stuff low and selling them high.

But I find it hard to believe that a few control the market and set all the price. I know there are afew high class traders, much like runners and farmers as a bussiness class. But controlling the prices... hummm.

I think it's in great part due to online price guides. People check what things are worth and will sell at that price.

Funny thing is, in-game items are worth what someone is willing to pay. The idea of a fixed price list is fine if everybody abides by it, but that clearly isn't the case.

ever done the Fort Aspenwood / Jade Quarry with Bots that continually enter matches and AFK the entire time ?

*ruins gameplay* for the other team members

its pretty obvious he was reffering to farming bots, and those bots have 0 impact on the econemy

Certainly not what I was meaning.

AFK bot are different, and don't even need to be bots. I could afk Jade quarry. In the grand design they don't impact the game either.

What rock have you been hiding under? Farming bots do have an impact on the economy due to the use of the money they farm. They inflate the GW prices.

^^
Can you prove this at all?

EDIT: By "those bots" I believe that he was referring to the so-called "afk bots", as the only impact on the economy that a farming bot should have would be lowering prices. More people would have an item, so there would be less demand. There also aren't many item-farming bots out there, so I'm still wondering how an ebayer of gold can inflate prices.

True. I was selling "The Purifier" with 50K and then after first message that I want to sell that item someone wanted to pay 35K from it.

Its the bots that farm for money or items they can sell for money and then they go e-bay that money, that ruins the economy.

Its because they have 100k gold. They sell it on e-bay. Someone buys it. They then buy items from players. Sometimes, just because they have so much money because they e-bayed, they pay just a little bit more than the item is worth. Then the person that sold it goes and tells someone else how much they sold it for. It then creates a chain that makes the item price now higher.

Also, there are much more than just one e-bayer, so that chain happens multiple times, with multiple items, which is called inflation.

Also, the people that buy the gold off e-bay would probably be buying a lot of items, and usually expensive ones. That means that the items will be in "high demand", so the sellers will slowly try to raise the price little by little and as long as it is still in "high demand", then it will keep raising because the sellers would want as much profit as possible.

This will also be happenening and create a chain of inflation.

Now of course this will be happening normally, without e-bayers, but not nearly as much. Without the e-bayers, only the people willing to work for their money will be able to buy the expensive things, and I'm pretty sure e-bayers buy the money so they don't have to work for it or because they won't work for it.

If there were no e-bayers, then those people buying the gold probably wouldn't have enough money as they would with e-baying, which means that there would be less people to cause the inflation, and less people willing to buy those weapons that are slowly raising in price.

In short, people buying gold off e-bay causes inflation.

those 'afk bots' do affect the economy, slightly, at least the jade/amber aspect of it. but they definitely ruin the 'game' aspect of those missions.
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I think that the guides (like the guru one, which is great) affect the economy VERY much. i see people say ex="storm bow...guru 100k, selling for 20k less..." all the time. two sides of it though...
1. it is great so that people dont pay 400k for a req10 storm bow from a rip-off
2. it is not so great because people will only pay (ex.) 40-50k for that storm bow. period. not a hair more. it ALWAYS has to be in the stated price range.
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I have about 20-30 greens that i solo and sell for money. also, as a guild group, we do green 'runs' to sorrows and 2-3-4-5 man farms. the ones that do it make a bunch of money. and we have fun doing it. i dont think that we ruin the economy because the gold we make goes back into the game.
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runners - i think that running ruined prophecies a little. having said that, a guildie ran me to the desert on my 4th character because i was tired of the storyline content. i simply did not want to grind out all the misisons. i wanted to ascend a necro ASAP for UW 2 man stuff.
i like the factions idea of locking areas and folowing the mission/primary quests. but i have won the game on 4 characters and i am done with the missions/quests until nightfall because i cant get run.
so, i see both sides of the running thing.

you are not an adult who has been around long enough to experience hyper inflation.

i will explain

IGN can supply a player with 20,000,000 gold in 2 hours or less.

current price is 49.99/1,000,000 game gold.

that is pumping gamegold into the game at a very high rate.

what happens when those buyers who buy bot gained gold start spending it in game?

i want that i bid 250k
ok 500k

the prices go up as people bid things up

inflation

look it up and you will see actual buying power going down

IMHO,
Gold farmers (bots) do nothing to the actual game economy.

Item sellers and buyers are the ones who inflate or deflate the price of an item.
We, the players of the game, are the ones who set these prices and we are the ones who willingly pay these prices. A "bot" does neither.

Example:
There is a Sephis Axe currently being auctioned. The current bid is 920,000 gold. Why is the price that high? Because the seller knows there is a buyer willing to pay that price. A "bot" didn't set the price and a "bot" isn't paying that price. If you were to take that same item to the in-game merchant you would only get maybe 500 gold.

So, the only people to blame for a bad or good game economy is ourselves.

That is a flawed piece of logic there. Sure, the buyers and sellers set the price, but if the buyer got his 2000k+ from buying gold off of ebay, then the botters had an influence on the price.

Prices of items fluctuate simply due to supply and demand.

When a new item is introduced into the GW economy, the prices are severely inflated. Stats are secondary to skins, or whatever happens to be the new "ego stroking" flavor of the day. Even two similar items, only separated by it's skin can vary widely in price. Collector items are for the most part just as good, if not superior, to their "unique" counterparts, yet are worthless because of looks and availability.

For example - the IDS craze. When first discovered, the price of the weapon was just ridiculous. As time went on, the price dropped because everyone was farming them. Because they became fairly common, anyone could buy them, and the prices dropped to a more reasonable cost.

But as far as gold availability is concerned - the game has too many easy ways to make cash for people that want to expend the time and effort to farm for it. Because there is little to do once you finish the game, most people simply amuse themselves by 2 man farming UW for ectos, or solo farming griffons. A lot of people blame the "bot farmers" yet the VAST majority of people are rich simply through normal play, and farming. There is a very large player base that exploited the 55 monk back before the skills got nerfed, then switched to 2 man monk/necro, or adapted their builds and/or changed locations. Heck, all of the money I've earned over the course of gameplay (enough to outfit 6 different characters with 15K armor, sometimes multiple sets) was mostly via farming tengu for runes, or making Tombs or B/P UW runs. And I'm only a casual farmer, I don't spend 8 hours a day doing it, in fact back when I played the game more often, I'd average maybe 1-2 hours a day simply farming.

Thus, for the more dedicated farmers, making money is incredibly easy. There is a HUGE player base with stupid money. Only the very lazy players buy gold off of ebay to get Fissure Armor.

Money is very easy to make. Blaming all of the ills of the GW economy on "bots" is naive. Sure, they have an impact, but I doubt it's very statistically relevant. Players over time have simply exploited the economy via farming, buy low sell high of items, commodity trading, etc. They have idiotic amounts of cash, and very little to spend it on except for the most vanity based items.

Maybe a little offtopic but I don't see how people can buy something so low and sell it so much higher to make any money out if it when measured on a GOLD:TIME ratio.

On topic, I don't have a problem with Ebay selling gold. Like you say it's for lazy players. In my opinion its for players who do not want to waste there precious time killing the same monster over and over again just to obtain gold. I'll admit it, I have no problem with eBay selling gold. I will also admit that I have bought gold from eBay, not because I am lazy, but because I simply value my time to such an extent, I will not waste so much of it obtaining an ingame item.

Another point I wish to add, there has been a few interesting ones made so far, The gold is going to be there anyway!
Bots aren't taking anything from the game there collecting it.
I mean a farmer can make just as much in a single sitting as a Bot could.

Sure the farmer won't be there 24/7. but if you do the math: 10k an hour ( which from what I understand is a decent if not high end average of gold farmed per hour) meaning for 10'000k it would take 1'000 hrs.

Thats alot of hours. Ofcourse real gold suppliers would have more then one bot working. The bot aren't influencing the gold drops, they do influence Anet into Nerfing certain areas but that effects casual farmers aswell.



also remember try to remain civil.
Farmers are not bots; like runner and power levelers there people engaging in a different sort of game play.

Buying low and selling high, Is when you buy it most times from someone who doesn't know the market price. And then sell it for the current market price.

And very brave admiting to breaking the rules of the game without posting your characters name
I really don't care if you've ebay-ed gold or not. And lets not beat up to harshly on him just for admiting it. People do it and his opinion is welcomed on the matter.

I just say what i'm wanting to sell. When someone whisps me with an offer. I tell them what I want for it. I then barter to a price thats in between both prices. Fair for both parties.

It's weird. I see people saying they buy eBay gold. I'm left wondering why? Everything I've gotten in this game I've gotten through my own effort. I've come up with a build for farming whatever I wanted. If I couldn't farm it with what characters I had, then I found something I could farm and trade for what I wanted. I managed to go through this game starting with nothing more than a starter bow and pre-searing armor. I worked my way up to my first million and beyond. It wasn't easy, but I did enjoy myself while doing it.

It strikes me as odd that you're playing a game and yet you don't want to take the time to acquire things by the rules of the game. Why even play then? You could have all the best gear and stuff right off the bat, but would it be any fun at all? You could be run through each and every mission. Would that be fun?

I doubt it.

If you do those things then I feel you're wasting your own time. You've reduced what could be a fun passtime into a wrote exercise. I'm certain that people who spend a few hours a week trying to farm a bit of gold or an item or two are still having far more fun than the player who twinks his characters with eBay gold. There is no sense of accomplishment for that player. And please don't tell me you intend to PvP... if your were purely a PvP person you'd know that gold is entirely irrelevant to PvP. You have unlocks for all your needs.

Inflation is an effect of the increasing amounts of gold in the economy. Just like in real world.
Now some of the fresh new gold that enters the economy comes from bots and professional farmers that sell it on eBay. We only don't know really how much. Because there are lots and lots of casual farmers, just normal player who farm gold for own use, and that gold also enters the economy.
I think that the % of gold coming from bot sources is relatively low, maybe 5% of what all normal people farm or just get by doing missions and quests

Another fact is that bots/professional farmers don't always farm pure gold. They very often farm golds/greens/upgrades/materials thus increasing the supply of them and actually lowering prices of those (i always get cheapest stuff from them And they sell those items to players for ingame gold, then they resell the gold at eBay. By doing this they DON'T increase inflation but in fact decrease prices of some goods.

Runners don't affect the economy at all, period.
Traders have a very limited power of affecting prices, cus we all know prices come from both sides - the supply and demand, and so-called power-traders are either one side or another.

And buying gold for real $$$ seems to be not popular in Europe, most people (like me) think it's completely retarded. Is it that much different in America?

The GW "economy" will remain in a state of disarray, until the auction house feature is implemented. Nothing in the game has been able to reach its equilibrium price because there's absolutely no way to determine true demand for an item. This causes the seller to be unsure where to price said item, and that's where you get 100k+ecto prices.

According to the definition of buying low selling high I see that as more of a "crime" than botting. Atleast bots don't take advantage of 'newbie' players to make a bundle. Just to clarify, I don't run bot programs.

I might have posted my characters name in previous posts but it doesn't really bother me too much. I don't mind spending out of game money for ingame currency. I'm 17 and have a secure apprenticeship therefore a fair sized and consistant income. There are only so many T-shirts and pairs of jeans you can buy to go clubbing, and also, so many rounds you buy for your friends before you catch them out for not buying drinks themselves.

I am very anxious to see what the Auction House comes out like, if there even will be one. There will be a very high demand to use this. So many people selling those extremely common Req9 15%^50% Shadow Blades will drop their price rapidly. And as for those rare skins, let's say a Req8 15%^50% Sephis Axe, if it is the only one Auctioning it may sell for a very high amount.

With the ammount of people coming to Guru's website to sell,check prices etc..they control the economy of guild wars.

Anet has basicly handed over the economy of the game to Guild Wars Guru lol

Anet should have had its own OFFICIAL website forums. I still think they need to create an Official forums and post its own guides to weapons, mods, runes and all the other things that have an impact on GW economy.

Guru does a poor job with keeping up to date on prices but people still read and follow them...why I will never understand.

In the German community, there used to be a list where people could enter the price they sold/bought something, and then someone calculated the average price for items and entered it so that people could check what things were worth. It was a nice idea.

However, the list was so horribly out of date and often had so rediculous high prices (probably affected by power sellers trying to push up prices) that it was quite irrealistic.
Anyways, most people still sticked to it. COnversations went like this:

A: WTB Upgrade XXX
B: I've got one
A: Ok, I'll pay 7k
B: But list says it's 18k.
A: But...
B: LOL n00b
B ignores you.

The "botters create inflation" argument is shot dead by the fact that prices are lower now than they have ever been. Across the board, weapon prices are down (barring crystallines, the "most desireable" skins do not fetch prices even CLOSE to the most expensive skins of only a few months ago). Material prices are in general down (ectos have been nice and constant, but shards have dropped), dyes have dropped massively (save black, which is now the only one worth trying to sell), and runes have just died. Obviously prices will jump up again when the new chapter comes out, as everyone is trying to buy armor, dye it, and equip themselves with the hottest new gear, but give it a few months and they'll fall down again.

Why people are talking about market problems NOW, of all times, I can't fathom.

i Was reffering to AFK bots, Not farming bots, and even Farming bots are up for debate, as they might pump money in, but they also sell golds and greens (read: lower prices) and i'll wager that the majority of Ebayers buy FoW and 15K (Read: Money sink, causing a net defaltion)

Its ALL speculative, nobody knows if farming bots deflate or inflate

There is no way one site will manipulate the market its just not possible.

Guiidlines need assitance from the people that use them to work.

Rain Nights guideline is a prime example of this, many people openly criticised the fact it was out of date but did they offer any info to update it? that's a big fat no.

I myself had a guideline stickied in the PC forum for unid but I had it removed due to the fact the ability to test unid became common knowledge and prices plummeted. I have to admit my guideline got a lot more help/info then Rains did however.

Taking advantage of a newbie is hardly a crime. The newbie has all the means necessary to check up on prices etc through guild/sites/friends.

have you been living under a rock or just brain dead to what has been going on?

there have been many posts on the panic get what i can before its worthless sales all over.

and you equate a panic fire sale with botting?

and you wonder why prices dropped now ?

when bots have been here the whole time?

sheeesshhh

Prices dropped due to increased drop rate and over farming.

Chapter based skins also fall due to the fact that there will always be a new "desired" skin when a new chapter is released.

Faction items were grossly over farmed that is why they fell so fast.

prices will only continue to go up at this rate, which is why i recommend u be able to get your own stuff. the top 2 things that will negatively effect the economy are:

Guild Wars store: through this online store made by anet player are just paying real world money for ingame money and items.
Noobs: noobs who have no idea how much things go for will pay higher prices for things and steadily increase the average price of items.

the way i see it, its the guild wars store thats really killing the economy. my neighbor buys all his money from the store and now has 5 sets of 15k armor. this is just making the rich in the real world powerful within and damaging to the economy of guild wars.

Guru frequently has Gaile posting here, this is the largest most popular website forums for Guild Wars. This forum has the busiest buying/selling forum of any.

It is very possible for one website to manipulate the market, people come here and trust the outdated prices etc..new players and veterans. You ask any player selling inflated priced items where they found the price for the item they are selling and 9 out of 10 times they will say Guru.

Anet needs to do something about this but probably likes the fact that they dont have to run a forums and moderate it. Its has and will be the downfall of this game/games. The Guild Wars economy is in ruins and economies make or break games. Why do you think they needed to step in and fix sigils? or why did they fix runes? Because the inflation was killing the game. Anet prides themselves on being anti level grinding and anti uber weapon but what has taken place of that is rare skins. Look on eBay and check out the prices on so called "Uber rare" Crystalline Swords/Dwarven Axes lol its rediculous and pathetic.

A healthy game economy means a healthy happy game and players of the game.

Look at the botom of the main page at the whats going on section. This website has 2600 people viewing it right now and over a million members lol not counting the guests that frequent it. Guru has an impact on the GW buying and selling economy.

Those who say it's people who cause the inflation hit it right on the nose. More specifically, it's people with lack of information on prices. Any price information is propagated by (surprise!) people. The problem is that without an in-game system to see this information (say, an auction house), this information will always be out-of-date and not nearly as accurate since it does not reflect the entire game's player base. This is the fundamental flaw in the game, and ebay/botting is a way deal with it.

The math doesn't add up

GW has sold 2+ million copies
At least 1 million of these copies are active
Guru has 100,000+some change as registered posters (couple thousand lurkers)

at the very most 1 in 10 of people would have visited GWG in their GW life time.

1 in 10 people is not a big enough number to manipulate anything. I'd agree Guru has some influence on the market but there is no way in hell one website will control the market.

no, you can't farm as hard as a bot because you cant play 24/7 without killing yourself. Bots bring a lot more monetary power in guild wars and allow players to consolidate it. Meaning lazy players dont get the extra 100k, no they get the extra 1,000k and then don't care enought about that money to spend it wisely nor have the market savy to really now what prices are.

I would agree though that many people who have been here along time also have a lot of money they have no idea what to do with and its those people who also have the largest reserves of money. But botters increace the ammount of people able to pay high prices regardless which keeps them high. Botters do negatively impact the game, and anyone who utilizes ebay or any other site to buy gold is part of the problem.

but the main reason the economy inflates is because the money supply is constantly getting larger. Monsters are continually dropping far more money then there is coming out of the economy, its that simple.

thinking that a site like guru effects prices in a severly negatively effects prices seems flawed to me, if anything increaced price knowledge in a somewhat foggy system like this should benefit the consumer. You're really only able to sell something what people are willing to pay, and I would hope people have a more intrinsic sense of value or want that a site wouldnt majorly manipulate that. Nor do I think that people who tend to sell a lot use this site as a way to form a cartell of prices, I really think that most people really want to get rid off things out of there inventory as easily as possible while still getting a profit, storage is limited in this game so holding on to anything hurts the bottomline.

as for rare skins, its not suprising that they sell for a lot. If they maintain the price they're difficult to farm for ( if they weren't then you'd see the price tank like it does on greens), and everybody or at least a lot of people want them. You have low supply and high demand, its kinda fundemental what the price is going to be like. (particularly considering that people in this game have a lot of dissposible income.)

I've posted on this topic in many, many threads, but in short the price of items is directly influenced by:

1. The amount of gold in circulation. Gold comes in via drops and selling items to the merchants. Gold goes out via armor purchases, key purchases, and material/weapon crafting. Gold also goes out of the economy through saving - accumulating wealth in storage or investing in rare materials (since those are purchased at the material trader).

Bots DO affect the economy, by increasing the gold that comes into the game by constantly getting drops.

2. The scarcity of the item. The item may be statistically one of the best items in the game, but if it's relatively easy to get, it's still gonna be cheap.

So, if you combine #1 and #2, THAT is why you get items the cost 100K+ ectos.

Join the club it's always interesting to see what weird and wonderful ideas people come up with..makes for interesting reading material lol

Sadly yes, in the euro districts its not as much of a problem, but on american servers some people think of ebaying gold as part of the game, its the same with a lot of pvp players also, they dont care for pve but they want the fissure armor and rare skins so they ebay for it, ive heard people talk about ebaying cash a lot on vent when in HA teams, the usual reason is they hate farming or think pve is too noob for them.

It's a false economy.. I think everyone is forgeting that in an instant the devs can make the economy do whatever they want. To think that bots and spammers control it, means that you are deceived.

2 examples:

1. I know someone that had just bought a HoD Sword, just before Factions came out.

2. Superior Absorbtion.

All I am saying is that, sure the economy is given some room to seem realistic, but at any moment ectos and black dye could fall from the sky, if they so choose. I am not saying they will, but if they see a gross imbalance, be sure it will be fixed.

I don't see how a bot would be able to tell the difference between a Green item, and a collector item, or anything like that.

The fact is, bots farm gold, not greens. It would be too wasteful to have them fill up their inventory with what might be a green, but is more likely a white. Instead they just sell it all to the merhant.
How do I know? Common sense that's how, bots can't see in game, they just follow a script.

Also, everyone keeps talking about inflation in the game, and yet, from what I can see, costs are at an all time low.